Akasha Mayan
Magellanic Itg
Goonswarm Federation
13
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Posted - 2015.11.17 13:23:35 -
[1] - Quote
I've got to start by saying my initial reaction to the new camera was borderline horror; for it having actively broken or frustrated a range of control or operations. I understand it's starting its development, and some things when I first looked were known broken, including the very first thing I did on undock, being to zoom out. And I agree there's been improvements. But for fleet-eve play, situational awareness is key and there are use-cases that have to be preserved.
I hope it's not news that means lighting models, blended textures, kill marks or entire ships are entirely irrelevant to the function of displaying tactical information; with clutter management of brackets/etc. I do not even really see the eve graphics at all, and yes as beautiful as eve can look it's trying to force me to, when what actually I need is to get things done.
Which means in practical terms eve is (present TQ camera) being zoomed out 500k or more for doing nearly anything, and looking at different groups of different coloured boxes because that's what a not completely terrible fc (or any other awareness-fleet role at all) requires from a camera.
Alt+1 tactical camera
I scouted every alliance CFC ever shot but I don't see it as necessary or even distinctly useful, and this is a scouting camera. (Even with huge grids, shouldn't you have to go closer to look rather than sit at 3000k in a cloaked rookie ship?) But it's no use to use if you have a moving ship, even when people used battleships and aligned at ~100m/s for minutes - with nearly every fleet reaching 1.5 to 2k/s (linked nano bc's/hacs), manoeuvring heavily and constantly, it's ludicriously unusable during any actual gameplay:
- if the camera doesn't follow your ship, you immediately lose situational awareness because you do not instantaneously know where you are, and thus not see where anyone is in relation to you (which you'd check, tracking your camera through 120 degrees every few seconds to update your mental model of other fleet/ship vectors (add projected velocity vectors to ships on ctrl+d tactical overlay, if you want an idea of something that might impress).
May I suggest, that I'd see this as essentially an auto-button to turn on the ctrl+d overlay and zoom to 500k camera (following movement of your ship). But that could go into the existing tactical overlay button. It just kind of feels redundant, which is not exactly a great offence;
Alt+2 orbital camera
This camera being bad/broken initially (lost ship tracking and random direction on wheel zoom?) but I guess work is being done and I'm finding it (today) much more acceptable. If this is the current-camera analog, it's more or less acceptable though the zoom (out) is (still) much too slow. On tracking the camera view direction, I guess it's floaty and tracks with too much mouse movement, but I'd get used to it.
What improvement would I like to see - well it is irritating enough in live-TQ to have to zoom out after every jump and it would be nice if you solved one of my problems. Either zoom faster out to large ranges, perhaps even add a default camera range option (for the account, and not ship, like was done with ship custom orbit etc ranges, but I digress).
One essential existing feature is overlooked (so far) - new dscan/probe interface aside, the target tracking camera added some time ago (with center through ship) is not reflected in current-sisi and it needs to be present. This is the one useful camera change for dscanning/recon, or simply highlighting location of and target selection in possibly forever, - 'c' to toggle camera track is possibly the button I press most after left click, because it quickly ((except when it doesn't)) highlights target direction in space. I do not want to see this ignored/removed, it is important.
Alt+3 first person
For what I do, it is non-relevant but i'll comment because for a new, clearly experimental feature, what application it might have right now (much like the keyboard nav controls themselves) doesn't have to apply to me; and I do think there's potential to design, through this a new vision of a possible flavour of eve experience, and that I'm very positive about. It doesn't need to exhibit the most amazing flight model, just some help to look more like it has one, and I think that experience is one that can offer a lot, being the difference between 'flying' and 'commanding' a ship. It was nice to fly around an asteroid belt (like elite). Main observations -
- it's possible to do 'hands-on' flying (rather than classic orbit control/etc), despite slow/sluggish control on, for example an interceptor at 5k/s, but to be realistically passable as a feature - allow the keyboard nav controls to roll over from maximum "up" and "down", so positive or negative loops can occur, and cancel the auto roll to level (or add a lag from last input to that)
- allow for (say) the normal lclick camera drag button to drag camera, and the ship then tracks to that direction according to its stats (maybe add rclick drag and for camera pan look, snap back on release). This implies adding a velocity vector indicator but should accomplish a lot (as well as allow gamepad/joystick psuedo-control..).
- target lead indicators? I can select from overview a target behind the camera, but it's less than clear what direction that is (remembering you'd normally look down on it from 500k). From first person, those offgrid brackets need to be more pronounced to be visible.
I'm not horrified of the new camera after a few days', and maybe after I have a better understanding of what you're going for with each mode. It is improving, but please do not restrain, or especially remove functionality. Thank you. |